Good evening, everyone.
Welcome to our live broadcast.
Today we're looking at the Pasuihara Sutta.
Pasu vihara.
Pasu.
I put the title of this one as harmony, but that's not quite what it is.
Pasu vihara.
Vihara, we know this word.
It means the dwelling.
So vihara means dwelling.
It could be a place or it could be a state.
When you dwell in some, when you live in a certain way, that's called a vihara.
When you live in a certain place, the place is called a vihara.
Vihara means if it's a place where you live or a living, a way of living or a place of living.
Pasu.
Pasu means comfortable or at ease.
And it's used, I don't know if it's used in other ways, but in the Dhamma it's most often used to refer to a community that lives in ease.
And so it's a quality of a community that is harmonious.
So this is the idea of harmony.
It involves the idea of harmony.
Now, we're going to see these five again, I think, in the Anguttara Nikaya Book of Sixes.
I know they're elsewhere, but I'm assuming they're also in the Book of Sixes.
it's going to add one so we'll revisit these and we'll add one more quality but these are the five qualities and it's given a different name but it's the same sort of idea so the idea here is that these five are ways of dwelling with living with other people living at ease in a community with relations
And a way of living with other people at ease, at ease with others and having healthy relationships.
That's really what it's all about.
And so one way of looking at this as a way to create communal harmony, create harmony in the community.
And that's a good way of looking at it.
It's important that we are mindful of our place in the community and our place with other people, our roles and our attitudes and our involvement with others.
Let it be healthy.
That we cultivate wholesomeness.
Because relationships can be an incredible boon, support for the spiritual life, but they can of course also be a real drag on the spiritual life.
So the last thing you want is to get stuck in a situation where you're with people who are dragging you down, who are preventing you from cultivating wholesome qualities because life is short.
And we want to make the best of it, the most of it, before we have to leave, have to slough off this mortal coil, something like that.
So we have to be mindful of our living situation.
Living at ease is an important quality.
You don't want to be worried about your living situation because it takes energy away from your practice.
So the other way of looking at these is as a means of determining whether a community or a situation is beneficial for your practice.
Sometimes
Sometimes leaving is preferable.
Sometimes even the Buddha, the monks were fighting the Buddha up and left.
He tried to talk to them.
They wouldn't listen, so he just left.
Sometimes you have to see to your own welfare.
If you want to help others, even if you want to help others, you yourself have to be well.
You yourself have to be comfortable.
If you're in a situation that
I was talking to someone this morning about this, and here's how I put it.
If you're living in a situation that is painful, if there's a lot of suffering in your living situation, that's not a problem in Buddhism.
Those of us who have taken up meditation can understand this, that pain isn't really a problem.
Even hard work isn't really a problem.
It can be problematic as it taxes your energy and so on, but it's not a reason necessarily to leave.
But if you're in a situation with evil, evil and suffering are two very different things.
So evil means if you're in a situation with other people who are abusive or immoral, alcoholics, drug addicts,
This isn't just suffering anymore.
So you say, well, I suffer with it or I live with it.
But when you're with other people who are engaging in evil deeds, it's more than just suffering.
you may not engage in the same activities that they do.
But evil cultivates evil nonetheless.
So when a person is, say, a drug addict or an alcoholic, so you may not engage in drugs and alcohol with them.
You say, well, I'm not doing it so I can live with them.
But you see, the problem with these things is it makes them unmindful.
So they will behave in ways and speak in ways that are...
that will instigate defilements in you.
You'll get frustrated with them, you'll get upset at them, you'll get stressed, you'll get worried, you'll get afraid, which are all evil.
Those are all other types of evil.
They're evil in the sense that they cause suffering and they cultivate into bad habits.
They become causes for you to do evil things, to do bad things, maybe not take drugs or alcohol, but to say bad things to others, to do bad things, to do things that you'll regret.
Evil.
Evil can only come of evil.
The only thing that can come of evil is more evil.
So in those cases it's often better to find another living situation.
If you can't move these people to change their ways, then it's not just a matter of bearing with it.
It's not like bearing with insects or bearing with heat or cold or pain or sickness.
Bearing with evil is much different.
Evil because of how it affects you, but also because of it not being a good situation.
If you stay in a living situation where others are constantly engaged in evil, you're a part of it.
Your staying is a support for them to keep doing what they're doing.
If they're abusive towards you or unpleasant towards you, then you're just helping them.
You're involved in it.
So you can stay completely mindful if you're an arahant and
not to be affected by it, but we have stories of Arahants when they found there was this Arahant who realized the monk who he was living with was very jealous of him, so he just up and left.
It's a good story actually.
This monk was afraid that this new monk looked so spiritually advanced that he was afraid he was going to lose his
standing in this village because everyone respected him and he got very jealous and greedy and so he threw out this monk's food in the morning he said okay I'll ring the bell when we go for alms and in the morning he tapped the bell with his fingernail and then he went into the village and the villager said where's that other monk that just came to visit and he said oh I don't know I rang the bell and he didn't come he must be sleeping in
and uh... so they said oh well we'll give you two we'll give you two portions of food then bring one back for him and so he ate the first portion and then they gave him a second portion to bring back and he looked at the food and he said this is really good food if he sees this he won't want to go anywhere and i can't have this monk staying here so he actually dumped out this other monk's food
and did a terrible deed as a result in the Arahant the Arahant in the morning got a sense of what was going on and he just left just walked out so that's there's definitely I mean because people will say well as Buddhists you have to just bear with it be patient with it but patience with evil is a touch and go thing it's not something you should stick with even if you're an Arahant
Of course, if you're an arhanta, I wouldn't have to tell you that.
It's a great wisdom and understanding about right and wrong.
Okay, without further ado, let's get into what are these five things.
What do you need?
The first three are simple.
So we have the Pali.
idabhikavibhikuno metangkayakamangpacupatitanghotih sabrammacharisu avicevarahocha
Does that mean here monks, by a monk?
No, not by a monk.
By a monk.
Mettaṃ kāyaka maṃ.
The bodily acts of metta are established.
That's not it.
By that monk, bodily activity maybe is established with loving kindness.
Abhikku maintains bodily acts of loving kindness.
It works as well.
Vikabodhi makes it active.
Towards his fellow, his or her fellow
practitioners in the spiritual life.
Brahmachari is the holy life.
And some Brahmachari is those who are living the holy life together with one.
In public and in private.
So what does this mean?
It means the things you do, you act out of love, both to their face and behind their back.
You don't smile to their face and then stab them in the back.
And likewise with speech, wajikamang and manukamang, metangkamangpacupatitanghunti.
In public and in private, your speech towards that person and about that person and your thoughts when with that person and your thoughts when without that person should be filled with love, with friendliness.
Metta really means friendliness.
You should have a friendly, kind behavior, kind attitude, kind speech.
Quite simple, no?
Metta is the key.
Metta is a big part of communal harmony.
Metta can change.
Friendliness can change a situation, which is why
It's a power that meditators have, the ability to change your mind, and the power to say, I'm going to change my attitude.
Because you have a sort of a presence of mind, and a centeredness, a balance.
Through the practice of mindfulness, things like friendliness come easy, and you can actually consciously cultivate it.
You can say, look, I have anger towards this person, but that's just my anger.
If I cultivate love, that will change.
So you cultivate it with your actions, speech and thoughts.
When you sit down and meditate, you take some time out of your insight meditation to send good thoughts to the people you live with.
That's one, two and three.
Number four and five are different and they're equally important.
It's important that we get this straight.
Lots of synonyms here.
It's a description of sila.
So one dwells in common.
Where's the tatarubesu?
tatarubesu silehi sila samanyagato viharat
Silasamanyagato is an interesting word.
I had an interesting encounter with this word.
I was in a community where I began to keep a precept that the other monks in the community were not keeping.
That's not true.
I had gone elsewhere and I had come to this community and it turned out that I kept a rule that they didn't keep.
And so they had a meeting about it.
Not directly.
Everything in Thailand is all indirectly.
So no one ever called me out on it.
But they had a meeting to talk about harmony.
And one of the monks says, yes, well, we need to have
sila samanyata is the word they use.
Samanyata means similarity.
And so they quoted this teaching.
This is the very teaching, or probably they took the six-fold version, the six-part version.
But they pulled out this one point and said, so if we're all keeping the precepts in a certain way, then everyone has to keep them that way.
I didn't get a chance, because there was never any point where I was called out, but it felt quite clear that it was because I had gotten some heat for doing this.
But I bring it up because I want to be clear about what this means.
This doesn't mean that you have to match your behavior to those around you.
And that's where all these adjectives come in.
So let's look at the adjectives.
See the samanyagato means one's ethical qualities are the same as one's...
one's fellow residents but let's look at the whole quote so dwells openly and privately possessing in common with his fellow monks virtuous behavior okay so common virtuous behavior ah but there's a key here well because you can ask the question before we even go into it well what about what about thieves you could say okay well sure thieves can get along but
Does that mean that the way to create communal harmony is to break precepts if other people are breaking them?
If everyone else is drinking alcohol, you should, and that's how you create living in ease?
You could argue that.
And so you could argue, as these monks did, that if we're all breaking the precepts, then that leads to communal harmony.
Except it doesn't.
And that's the problem.
One of the big reasons why I started keeping fairly strict precepts is because I saw how certain precepts, when broken, destroy communities.
That's why the Buddha instated them.
There's many precepts that are mainly, not entirely, but mainly for the purpose of cultivating communal harmony.
And so what the Buddha says here is you have common virtuous behavior that is unbroken, flawless, unblemished, unblotched, liberating, praised by the wise, unclinging, and leading to concentration.
It's a tall order, really.
But we can draw something from this, that morality is important.
And if someone is, anyone is engaging in a breach of whatever type of morality that the community is cultivating, and by that I mean the five precepts or the eight precepts or the ten precepts or the many, many monastic precepts,
but at least a basic set of morality, right?
When people start breaking them, communal harmony breaks down.
So obviously, if everyone's stealing from each other, that doesn't create communal harmony, just because you have the same view and grasp of ethics.
Ethical behavior, when everybody keeps it, creates communal harmony.
But it was quite specific here.
It's not just having the same ethical behavior.
It's that everyone has actually behavior that is ethical.
That leads one to dwell at ease.
If you've got a thief, a monk, a thief in your midst.
We had one monk once in a place where I stayed and he was a thief.
He wasn't a monk.
He certainly wasn't.
I mean, honestly, I don't have any proof that he was a thief, but just everyone was saying that he was stealing this, stealing that.
They saw him steal.
So it's all just hearsay to me, but man, he was a kleptomaniac.
And it tore up the community.
Everyone was very angry all the time and worried all the time.
The novice monks, their money just disappeared and that kind of thing.
Not good.
So that's number four.
And number five is the same but with views.
So one has the same views as one's fellow monks.
That's important.
One's fellow meditators say, one's fellow religious people.
But it's also not the case.
If you all have views that there's no benefit in helping others or there's no wrong in hurting others, it's a bad view that's not going to lead to harmony.
If you have the view that there's no harm in clinging and no harm in addiction, then everyone is always striving after their own greedy ambitions, and that doesn't lead to communal harmony.
But right view, having right view, and cultivating right view.
Yes, you have to have views in common with your fellows.
And in a lot of ways that's equally important in regards to simple matters of the approach to the spiritual life.
If everyone, so to take an example from monastic community, if everyone is
practicing certain special practices, like everyone's all decided to only eat from their alms bowl or only eat one meal a day.
These kind of things create communal harmony if everyone does it.
But if someone doesn't, because there are different approaches to the monastic life, and if everyone does it in different ways, you could argue that that's
It may take away from communal harmony.
There's certainly the Ajahn Chah monasteries and the Damayud monasteries, really.
They have this down good.
Every one of their monasteries does it in a similar way.
And every monk in the monastery eats food at the same time in a similar way.
You've got to admit, there's some power to that.
But it's not that important.
I don't really subscribe to that.
I'm generally of the opinion, let everyone do the way they're going to do.
And I think that was common in the Buddhist time as well.
Different monks would practice in different ways.
So I think it's important that we single out the views, that we're clear that everyone has right view, because people with wrong view disturb the community.
It's hard to live in ease when you're with people.
And so the greater point is that
If there are members of the community or people you live with who are not following these five, this is what destroys the community, which makes it uncomfortable and unsuitable to live in that community.
We have cases where the Buddha left, where Arahants would just leave.
People with wrong view, people with unethical behavior, people who are just unfriendly, people who are mean and nasty to live with.
It's not a wholesome place, not conducive to meditation or mental development or goodness in general.
So there you go, these five.
Good to remember.
So good to remember for us that these are things we have to cultivate.
But also good to keep in mind as things that you want to look for in a community.
You want to look at your own living situation and decide whether it's to your benefit to stay or to go.
So there you go.
A little bit of Dhamma.
Now, if you will, if there are any questions, we can do some Q&A.
I don't hear you, Robin.
How's that, Vante?
Better.
Okay.
Hello, Venerable Banpe.
My question is about tenseness in the abdomen during walking.
In walking meditation, I'll notice that the stomach is tense, so I loosen up, and when returning the mind to the walking, the stomach is tense again.
Is tenseness related to clinging to something?
Is there underlying fear that I need to work on, or is there something else that results in the tenseness?
It should be a goal to be as loose as possible in the body as I walk.
Is this right?
I should be releasing tension as I notice it.
Is this right?
Is tenseness something that will cause one to not go very deep?
Should I include the abdomen in my mindfulness as I walk to ensure that it is relaxed?
Thank you, Bhante.
What do you think, Robin?
Well, I mean, you don't have control over whether you're tense or not.
And when you're walking...
the more you shouldn't even try to control the tenseness.
I'd go with that.
Because you can try, and the mind can signal as he's doing.
He actually is able to, to some extent, control.
But I think the point is that's not the way we do things.
So that part I can answer right away.
No, it's not.
And that's an important aspect.
No, it's not.
It's not the goal to be as loose as possible when you walk.
Sorry, I interrupted you.
What else were you going to say?
Oh, no, that's fine.
I was just going to say, during walking, even though there are other things going on, we are trying to kind of stay with the feet.
In this case I would recommend stopping.
Don't do it while you're walking.
So yeah, he's asking that.
Don't do it while you're walking.
Stop walking.
You can say to yourself, stopping, stopping.
And then with your feet together, then focus on the stomach.
But you're not trying to loosen it.
Then you would say to yourself, tense, tense.
You're not trying to loosen it.
Because no, tension isn't indicative of anything.
It doesn't matter where it came from at all.
It's important that you just see it as tension and so that you don't start to question what does it mean?
What could it mean?
What does it signify?
It doesn't signify anything.
It signifies tension.
That's the key to the meditation practice.
See it as it is.
Of course, if you're worried about it or concerned about it, that's something else, and you should not that worried, worried, or concerned.
Hello, Bhante.
On your answers that meditation for beginners should probably not be a comfortable thing, walking meditation seems to be maybe too easy to accomplish as opposed to sitting meditation.
at which i'm still at my diapers any suggestions it's not something that arise as an easiness of accomplishing walking meditation while doing it just that sitting is way harder than walking that might change um
And easy may be sort of all in how you look at it.
So the question is, during walking, is your mind with your foot 100% of the time?
If your mind is not with the foot 100% of the time, then it still needs work.
But the other thing is we have a more detailed walking step, which can help.
stepping right stepping left is pretty basic and there are some traditions that start you off with the third walking step lifting moving placing we don't do that we start you at stepping right stepping left and then as you go through the course we will the teacher will give you a higher walking step
So I've had some people actually decide they're gonna do higher walking steps, which is you know, it's theoretically fine It's just a problem when it comes to me actually trying to lead them through the course the best way is if you can hold off and try and Schedule time to meet with me once a week and and I can give it to you properly And once you get all the steps you can choose which step you want to do Third step fourth step fifth step six step but
Walking meditation is, I think, quite valid.
It's about cultivating clarity of mind.
It's also good for teaching you how to be mindful when you move.
But it changes from day to day, week to week, month to month.
Walking and sitting, sometimes one is easy, the other is difficult.
Sometimes the other way around.
It is.
Sometimes it seems easy, and then the next day you can barely take two steps without stumbling.
It's just the way it is.
Hi, Panthe.
Is it okay to lower your head when watching the rising and falling of the abdomen, or is the head supposed to be even, not in a high or low position?
Thank you.
I mean, you would keep it looking straight ahead.
You wouldn't consciously say, I think it's better to, I want to lower my head and then do that.
But if your head goes down because you're tired, that's fine, that happens.
Usually you'd want to lift it back up when you realize it's a wanting to lift, wanting to raise, raising, raising.
When it goes down again, you can just pick it up.
Sometimes you're so tired that your head just falls.
Sometimes you fall asleep, that kind of thing.
But generally it's better to consciously have your face looking straight with your eyes closed.
But if you're mean, like actually with your head down watching the abdomen, that's a really bad idea because you're not using your eyes to watch, you're using your mind.
That was it.
You guys are too easy on me.
Wow.
And that was after two days.
Disgraceful.
No, that's good.
That means everyone's meditating.
Yes.
Or everyone's given up.
We have lots of meditators.
What's our meditation list look like?
Wow, that's pretty good.
Good list.
Sanka didn't have a question?
Come on, Sanka.
Hey, it's Timo.
No, it's Timo from Germany.
I know a Timo in Canada, but it's not him.
All right, then.
Thanks, everyone.
Thanks, Robin, for your help.
Tomorrow I'm meeting with the
It's got a big acronym, but it's something on campus, some kind of interfaith group to see about working with the chaplaincy office, I think.
I'm not quite sure, but hopefully they'll let us do some chaplaincy work, all the other religions on campus.
And I have a doctor's appointment to find out why I'm burping all the time.
I think I'm just getting old.
I think that's all it is.
My body is saying.
My body is laughing at me.
It's playing tricks on me.
It's breaking down.
My body is like an old cart.
I keep patching it up until finally it just falls apart.
I'm dying.
What do the doctors ever have anything pro or con to say about your practice of not eating after noontime?
I didn't tell him that, and I was just thinking that probably tomorrow I should tell him that I only eat in the morning.
I know he's going to say, you know, you should be eating something in the afternoon.
Because it's a big, apparently ulcers, you can get ulcers if you're not careful with your, I don't know, somebody told me that, some Thai man told me, and a Thai doctor told me monastic diet is wrong.
Well, I don't know.
I mean, actually, Doug, one of our volunteers, had posted a video in our Slack about what's kind of the new thing, intermittent fasting.
And there are similarities to the monastic diet with the sixth precept, because apparently there are some benefits to going long periods of time without eating.
But it would just be interesting to... You probably should mention it to them, though, Pante, because...
Because if what you're experiencing is a digestive problem, they probably should know that, right?
Yeah.
Probably.
So a diet and some French stuff.
I'm learning French.
Oh, a neat thing.
Today I went to, we got this French conversation class and the tutor said he wants, because he was asking what we're interested in that we want to talk about.
And I said, of course, meditation.
And I'm looking to find ways.
I'm learning French for the purpose of being able to teach meditation to French people.
And so today he said, you know, I want you to come in here and try and teach us meditation in French.
And we'll try and work through that.
He's interested in learning meditation.
And the other woman who's also in my class, who's in this conversation class, she's open to it anyway.
That'll be fun.
So I'm going to pull down the French translation of my booklet and try that out.
Okay.
Well, good night, everyone.
Thank you, Bhante.
Good night.
See you again soon.